


white blank page

by mythic_bitch_0



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 12:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12254433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythic_bitch_0/pseuds/mythic_bitch_0
Summary: Cloud Strife and Zack Fair are on the run. Zack’s death, and the moment Cloud loses his memory – plus Vincent Valentine helps Cloud find forgiveness. There really isn’t any firm pairing in this, some hinted Clack and possibly future Strifentine (Cloud/Vincent). Heavy angst, brief suicidal mention, but a hopeful ending. Title is from Mumford & Sons “White Blank Page.” The first part is a stand-alone story, so if you like heavy angst and the ending feels good to you, just stop there. If you prefer a happier ending, read the second part where Cloud finds forgiveness with Vincent’s help.





	1. death & reverie

**Author's Note:**

> There now, steady, love  
> So few come and don’t go  
> Will you, won’t you  
> Be the one I’ll always know?  
> When I’m losing my control, the city spins around  
> You’re the only one who knows  
> To slow it down  
> -“Look After You”, The Fray

_The burn of mako is like fire, and Cloud comes to realize that he never understood pain until now. The way the caustic fluid coats his throat, his eyes, the inside of his nose – it is white hot agony, it is the boiling shame that overtakes him, it is his own weakness, made real._

Zack pulled him from the green hell that they both lived in, but Cloud is still stuck in the burning. Zack talks to him, tousles his hair, even slaps him eventually, to try to bring him back into the world, but Cloud’s eyes are blank and unfocused. He knows this is not real, he knows that nothing is real except the burning of his flesh, and he can’t hear anything above the screams of failure that echo in the glass container.

“Cloud!” Zack shouts, frustration mounting again as Cloud slumps to the hard-packed ground outside of Midgar. Zack knows, most of the time, that this is not Cloud’s fault, that mako addiction cannot be fought until his body purges the last traces of the mako, which can take months—but damn it, _god damn it_ , he can’t do this by himself.

Cloud’s eyes roll toward the sound of Zack’s voice, and Zack feels a jolt in his stomach as he sees Cloud’s blue eyes widen with wild fear. “Ho…jo…” Cloud moans, and his eyes close.

Zack drops to his knees immediately, caressing the smaller boy’s face. “Cloud, hey, Cloud, it’s just me, buddy. It’s Zack. Zack. Hojo’s gone. We’re okay, yeah? We’re okay now.” The lie sours on his tongue, because Zack is pretty sure that they have never been farther from okay in their lives—well, maybe in the reactor, when Zack saw the fire and the bloodlust glowing in Sephiroth’s cat-slit eyes. But god, the ShinRa army is out for blood now and the years of being confined in mako have made Zack clumsy, tired.

Cloud mumbles, “Z-Z-Zack,” and falls still. Zack is encouraged by this, it’s progress, right? Cloud said his name, and Cloud said Hojo’s name, so maybe he’s starting to come around, to remember some things. He just needs more time, Zack decides, and he resolves to be more patient.

_Sephiroth’s eyes burn with anger and the perfect face that Cloud had once idolized contorts into disgust. Cloud is overwhelmed by the white hot pain as the long, slender sword lifts him up like he is infinitesimal, like he is nothing. He isn’t a SOLDIER, he isn’t anything special, he’s just a lowly infantryman, but his anger makes him brave, and Zack’s words of encouragement make him strong._

_He cannot allow Sephiroth to destroy him like this, and he summons up all his strength, all_ Zack’s _strength, and forces himself forward on the sword, inch by excruciating inch. It is pain beyond endurance, pain beyond belief, but Cloud feels a thrill of power when his feet touch the ground._

They have been traveling for weeks, now, and Zack has carefully brought Cloud every place that he’s needed to go, from the desperate escape from Nibelheim, to the devastating visit to Gongaga, and now this mad dash back to Midgar. In the back of his mind, Zack knows that the blond is slowing him down, that it would improve his chances if he left him somewhere – but whenever Zack puts Cloud down on the ground, he raises a slender, shaking arm, reaching trustingly out to Zack, and Zack knows he can’t bear to leave him behind. Not like this.

Zack brushes the wild blond hair gently and sits beside Cloud, telling himself that he isn’t really taking a rest, he’s just making sure Cloud is okay. Zack is SOLDIER, the best of the best. Not that SOLDIER is such a great thing to be, these days. In fact, Zack thinks gloomily, these days SOLDIERs seems to have an awfully short life expectancy.

The silence is oppressive, and Zack just starts talking, like he’s been doing for weeks, when the reality of their situation catches up to them and the knot in his chest tightens. He’s told Cloud about SOLDIER, about everything he had gone through to get to First Class. He tells him of Angeal, of Genesis, of how he felt when he saw Sephiroth draw his sword, of how the heat of the town on fire flooded him with a panic that he had never felt before. Zack tells Cloud that he’s going to become a mercenary. He has plans, of course, and he tells Cloud that they will be together, that he will always be there for him, that someday he will be strong and healthy again.

Zack promises all kinds of things, talking into the silence he so hates, hoping against hope that Cloud is still in there, somewhere, that Cloud can still hear him, somehow. “We only have a little further to go,” he encourages, gathering his strength. They’re almost to Midgar, and he intends to get there in the next stretch. “Can you stand, buddy? Can you help me?”

Cloud’s eyes open slowly, and for a second they focus on Zack. Zack tries his best smile, trying to look friendly and calm, like he’s got things under control. “Cloud, you hear me, don’t you?”

“Z-Zack,” he breathes, his expression pained, and his hand stretches towards Zack’s before his blue eyes become blank, his face slack once again.

“Come on, Spike,” Zack urges, hearing the strangeness of his voice, the strangled syllables that tighten in his throat as he watches the expression leave Cloud’s face, slipping back into whatever trance he has been in this whole time. “Come on, I’m here. I’m with you. We’re okay.”

But there is no response, and Zack feels a rush of anger. “God damn it, wake _up!_ ” Cloud doesn’t react, and Zack tamps down the wave of panic that has been threatening to overtake him, to drown them both, and he fists his hands together, forcing himself to be calm.

_Cloud is bleeding all over the reactor core, the hot blood dripping down his uniform, slicking the path that Sephiroth stands on. It would be so easy to let go, to give into the pain and darkness and close his eyes, but Cloud is bursting with adrenaline and fury, and as soon as the tips of his boots touch the floor, he meets Sephiroth’s startled green gaze, and he is pure defiance. “Impossible,” Sephiroth growls._

Zack is trekking onward, half-carrying, half-dragging Cloud through the barren land outside Midgar, oddly cheered by the ruined land. Everyone knows nothing grows near Midgar, and it’s encouraging to know that they are close now, they _have_ to be close. Cloud is moving more, now, his eyes seeming a little more focused. He still isn’t talking, but the way his pupils track Zack’s face raises Zack’s spirits, and he keeps up a steady stream of patter to encourage Cloud.

The dark-haired SOLDIER is thinking that they just might make it, when his enhanced hearing picks up the whirr of a helicopter, and he knows that it’s coming for them. They’re not so close to Midgar that the ground is all flat, and Zack grabs Cloud underneath his arms and pulls him behind a huge rock, setting him down gently. Zack touches Cloud’s hair tenderly, trying not to show the dread he feels. “Wait here, buddy,” he says, aiming for upbeat. Probably he misses the mark, but he forces a smile anyway.

Cloud can only see a blurry dark-haired form—Zack? _Zack,_ he thinks, _that’s Zack,_ his brain feeling slow, sluggish. He opens his mouth to speak but the sound comes out twisted, slurred beyond comprehension. _Where…where…_

The silhouette grows smaller. _Is he leaving?_ Cloud tries to talk, to push through the numbness, but he can only hold out a hand beseechingly as his friend disappears. _No…no…_

_No…_

Zack walks past the rock and sees the ShinRa army waiting. Whoever deployed them clearly knew exactly who they were going to be up against, because they have sent what appears to be the _entire_ _army,_ hundreds of infantrymen all equipped with guns, all looking serious and ready to kill. Hundreds of gun barrels are trained to his face, and Zack feels his anxiety begin to melt away. There is nothing to do now, no decisions he has to make. All he can do is fight, and fighting is the one thing he knows how to do.

_They were right to send the army_ , Zack thinks with a strange pride. _Because I won’t back down. And I won’t let anyone kill Cloud_.

“Boy, oh boy,” he says easily, loud enough for his voice to carry. “The price of freedom is steep.”

Slowly, Zack reaches up to grasp his sword handle. In this moment, what could be his last moments, he allows himself to think of Angeal. He can make Angeal proud; he can protect the weak and fight with honor.

“Embrace your dreams,” Zack says quietly, drawing his sword. “And whatever happens, protect your honor – as SOLDIER!”

Adrenaline begins to flow and Zack feels oddly at home, ready for this fight. He takes a running start at the nearest trooper. “Come and get it!”

And they do. They shoot at him, and Zack throws himself into the heat of battle, dodging, slashing, cutting down man after man. He would feel bad – they stand no chance against him – but _they_ showed up _here_ , _they_ are trying to kill him and his loved ones. All he wants is peace, these days, but he has come to realize that he will always have to fight for it.

Zack Fair knows how to fight.

 

* * *

 

Cloud can hear the unmistakable sounds of combat, coming from what feels like a long way away. Something tells him it is close by, though, and he finds that for some reason, his arms seems like they’re working now. His vision is still blurry, the edges still white, but he manages to drag himself towards the sounds, slowly making his way beyond the cliff that had kept him safe while the battle raged on.

He collapses at the edge, his vision going white once more.

When he is able to open his eyes again, his vision has cleared a little bit, and there’s Zack – bloody and panting, barely able to lift the massive sword, but he’s still fighting. He is pushing forward painfully, and Cloud realizes that he is in trouble. He wants to help him, but his legs won’t move.

Zack turns towards one of the three remaining troopers and swings his sword clumsily. Just as he connects with the man, he feels a strange pressure in his chest. He looks down and oh, God, there’s a lot of blood. He can’t stand, suddenly, and he careens dangerously towards the ground, unable to keep himself from falling.

_No!_ Cloud wants to yell, but all he can manage is a groan. One of the helmeted troopers walks up to Zack and, his blank face expressionless, unloads his ShinRa standard issue assault rifle directly into his chest.

Even SOLDIERs can’t heal from everything.

After the troopers pronounce Zack fatally wounded and Cloud comatose, they take off. Their corpses will be left behind, a tragic accident, perhaps an unsolved mystery. Maybe ShinRa will write it up as a resisting-arrest fatality, maybe they won’t even bother and they’ll just deny any involvement.

The helicopter whirs and Cloud opens his eyes again. His head is throbbing and he can taste mako, and maybe he’s confused. Maybe he’s hallucinating, because there’s no way vibrant Zack Fair can be bleeding like that.

Zack is still laying there.

Cloud feels his breathing quicken; this cannot be happening. This is not real, where is the tank of mako? But then Zack shudders and he turns his head so he’s facing Cloud, a small smile on his face. “C-Cloud,” he murmurs.

He’s still alive. Zack is alive, and Cloud’s vision sharpens. He is remembering Sephiroth stabbing him in the reactor, he’s remembering the way he pushed through the pain and forced himself further onto the sword. He pushes against the numbness, the headache, and forces himself to crawl towards Zack.

“Zack?” he whispers. Is this real?

Zack’s chest is jerking with shallow, quick breaths. He has been injured many times, but he’s never felt like this before. _I am dying_ , he realizes, and he expects to feel panicked, to feel excruciating pain and frustration, but nothing comes. It’s just shallow breathing, and the edges of his vision are starting to fade. _I am going to die here._ He pictures beautiful Aerith, standing in her church, surrounded by flowers.

Zack looks up at Cloud, whose blue eyes are enormous with fear and shock and confusion. Cloud is kneeling beside him, his hands shaking. He looks like a frightened child, his mouth twisted into grief, but Zack knows more than anybody that Cloud has strength in him, and that he can do great things. He will do better than SOLDIER – better than ShinRa.

“For the – both of us,” Zack pants.

“Both of us?” Cloud asks softly, his eyes never leaving Zack’s for a moment.

“That’s right. You’re gonna…” Zack tries to force out the rest of the sentence but he has no air, and he’s reduced to gasping.

“You’re gonna…” Cloud repeats hollowly.

“Live.” Zack manages to reach up, to grab Cloud’s head and pull it against his bloody chest. Cloud relaxes into Zack, listening to the comforting sound of Zack’s heartbeat. He won’t die. It’s still so strong. “You’ll be – my living legacy.”

Zack grips the massive sword’s handle and tries to pass it to Cloud. Angeal passed it on to him—did he wield it well? Did he protect his honor and Angeal’s? It’s too late to figure out what went wrong and where, Zack thinks as Cloud uncertainly takes the sword. Hopefully, Cloud will be able to do better than both of them.

“My honor,” Zack says, indicating the sword. “My dreams. They’re yours now.”

Cloud looks at him for a moment, confusion written across his features. Zack is hoping that Cloud can understand, praying that the mako levels are low enough that he’s going to be okay.

“I’m your living legacy,” Cloud says slowly, Zack’s blood dripping down his face.

Zack tries to nod and settles for a smile. _You’ll be okay, Cloud. Aerith, I’m so sorry._

Cloud can do nothing but watch as Zack gasps for breath, his chest heaving. Zack pictures Angeal, and knows his time is up now, too. _It’s…okay. Aerith. Angeal. Cloud._

Zack’s chest rises and falls, and does not move again.

Panic rises in Cloud’s throat, and the scream that follows is pure pain, made audible. It is heartbreak, it is loneliness, it is betrayal. The panic overwhelms him, and he jackknifes forward, crippled, and places his head on Zack’s bloody, unmoving torso. The metallic scent of his best friend’s still-warm blood horrifies him, and his hot, salty tears mingle with the rusty fluid.

“Don’t go,” he whispers, his voice thick with agony. “Don’t leave me here like this.”

But he’s already gone, his last smile fading, and all the magic, all the pain, all the prayers in the world cannot breathe life into the lifeless, cannot reanimate the motionless corpse of Zack Fair.

 

* * *

 

Cloud does not know how long he lays there, trying to hold Zack. He only begins to notice time passing when the scent of warm blood begins to cool, and when Zack’s warm, strong body grows cold and congealed against him.

_I’m his legacy_ , Cloud thinks, his mind still feeling sluggish, confused. _I’ll be just like you, Zack. I’ll make you proud_.

“Thank you,” Cloud whispers, his voice hoarse from pain. “I…won’t forget. Good night, Zack.”

Cloud forces himself up and walking. He knows if he does not leave now, he never will, he will just stay there and rot with Zack’s corpse, and would that really be so bad?

No. Zack wouldn’t like it, Cloud tells himself, and he drags the sword behind him as he starts away. Where will he go now? What should he do? Cloud tries to think where they are, where they were going. Zack wanted to go…to Midgar, right? That makes sense, they’re close to Midgar. He can make it there, maybe figure out what Zack was trying to do.

Mercenary? A faint, distant memory echoes in his head. He can hear Zack’s voice, as if from miles away, telling him that he was going to go to Midgar and become a mercenary. _Dangerous stuff, for money._ Yeah. That sounds like Zack, daring and confident. _You hear that, Cloud? Me an’ you, we’re gonna become mercenaries._

But _Cloud_ can’t possibly become a mercenary. He can shoot a gun, barely, but there’s no way he can swing around this sword with the effortless grace that Zack Fair had.

Just go to Midgar, he instructs himself. Maybe he’ll find what Zack wanted there.

As Cloud walks, he begins to realize that his body is stronger than he thought, from all that time burning in mako. His arms, which were so skinny before, have hard, ropy muscle, and it’s the same all over his body. He’s clumsy and tired, but his body is different than before.

He has a body kind of like Zack’s, he thinks. A SOLDIER body. But _Zack_ was the one in SOLDIER…a wave of confusion washes over him for a minute. He was never in SOLDIER, was he? No, he was in the infantry.

Cloud is wearing a SOLDIER First Class uniform, though.

He pushes it out of his mind, focusing on his trek to Midgar.

 

* * *

 

He manages to catch the train that circled the inner city – not that he has any money on him, so he just climbs aboard and glares at the attendant. Covered in blood and looking like hell, nobody seems to want to question him, and as soon as he collapses into one of the seats, a familiar wave of nausea starts to rise in his stomach.

He’s never had motion sickness before, has he? He can’t remember; he tries to call back the transport truck that brought them to Nibelheim, he can see Sephiroth, but where is he sitting? Was _he_ talking to Sephiroth, fighting beside Sephiroth?

No, that was Zack. Wasn’t it? But Cloud is the one with the sword…

Cloud’s head hurts. He can’t think, so he tries to clear his mind, think of nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

When they arrive at the station, Cloud pulls himself up and exits the train, and that’s when it happens. He turns back to the train for a moment, and the windows of the train reflect his image.

He sees a tired, bloody man. A SOLDIER First Class uniform. An enormous sword strapped to his back. Spiky hair – blond, not black. Not like—

His mind stutters, there’s no other word for it. The sight of himself, bloody, clad in the uniform he was used to seeing Zack wear, holding the sword that Zack had wielded so masterfully – and who was he? Who was he to take on Zack’s mantle, to wear what Zack wore, to stand where Zack had stood?

_“My living legacy,_ ” Zack had called him, and died in his arms. But what had _Cloud_ done, next to Zack?

He can’t think, he can’t think. Why is he standing where Zack stood? Why did he think he could do this? He feels his legs tremble, and the huge sword is suddenly unbearably heavy. Cloud stumbles towards the lamp post nearby and feels himself stagger towards the ground, his head suddenly bursting with pain.

Cloud brushes his fingers against the thick fabric of the SOLDIER uniform he had so coveted before. What is this? Why isn’t he wearing his normal infantry uniform, with the scarf? Thoughts tumble through his mind directly on the heels of each other, drowning him.

_Zack gave this to me. Zack was SOLDIER – First Class. Zack was SOLDIER._

_No, I was SOLDIER._

_I was never SOLDIER._

_Why am I wearing this uniform?_

_I was SOLDIER._

_I was_

His mind flashes blank for a second, a mere second of no thought, no pain, a wordless void.

_First Class. I was SOLDIER First Class._

Cloud is full of images, half remembered. A town on fire. Hot, acrid air. Sephiroth’s long silvery hair, his eyes glowing in the flames. And there’s Zack, swinging the Buster Sword in victory, but no, that’s _him,_ his blond hair, his blue eyes. He was SOLDIER, First Class. They gave him a uniform.

_Who is Zack?_

The leftover mako in Cloud’s blood and the Jenova cells overtake him, and he is confused, anesthetized once again. He falls against the floor of the train station, and blackness comes mercifully, silencing his screaming brain.

 

* * *

 

Someone in red is leaning over him; he hears a man’s voice. A warm hand rests on his head, and the half-remembered sensation of warm skin brushing against his hair fills him with nausea, and there is a bolt of pain.

“Poor kid,” the hazy red figure says, but Cloud is hobbled again, and he cannot make himself heard.

He hears a low, choked moan, and his lethargic brain barely recognizes that it’s coming from him.

Another shadowy figure rushes up, this one smaller, with dark hair, like—

Nausea. Pain. Revulsion. Cloud shudders away from the dangerous thought, and hears a high, female voice.  “Are you all right?” she asks, and the voice is somehow familiar, soft. He tries to force a response.

“Uhhh,” he groans, trying to make himself recognize the pale, concerned face that barely rings a bell.

Cloud’s blood is suddenly rushing in his ears, and he hears a voice he can almost identify as Jenova laughing, and more memories suddenly tumble into his aching brain. This is his childhood friend Tifa. He was in Nibelheim, five years ago. He was with SOLDIER. Sephiroth set the town on fire _. I was mesmerized by the way he fought._ The cold Nibel mountains. _I was surprised at how Tifa had changed_. This was his sword, this was his uniform, his life. _I became, I am, a mercenary._

_Just like him._

A flash of blinding pain, and the thought is gone. He who? Cloud is a loner, a mercenary, he relies only on himself and his own abilities. His strength, his worth, is in his sword-arm. As memories fall into place, Cloud finds himself able to stand again. Memories flood into place, and he remembers her now, remembers himself.

“Tifa?” he hears himself say.

She looks so familiar. She was in Nibelheim five years ago. She is his childhood friend.

“Tifa,” he repeats.

She is gazing at him full of concern. . The sword feels light as he swings it into place on his back. Well, his sword-for-hire work he’s done in the last few years keep his SOLDIER physique up, so why wouldn’t it be light? Cloud does not need to be pitied. He is strong. He is capable. He is alone, which works best for him.

Another blinding flash of white.

“Tifa.”

She looks at him curiously for a moment and then smiles tentatively. “Oh, Cloud!”

_Cloud Strife. Ex-SOLDIER. First Class._ “That’s right,” he tells himself. That feels right. “I’m Cloud.”

“Is it really you, Cloud? I never thought I’d find you here!” She moves forward, as if to embrace him, but then she just smiles. Is this an unusual meeting? Where is he? Cloud looks around. He is in Midgar, right? He’s at the train station. But why is he here?

“Yeah. It’s been a while,” he agrees, trying to remember what he’s doing in Midgar. His head hurts, he’s confused—no, he’s not confused. He’s fine. He’s okay. He was in Midgar to look for a job. A mercenary job. That’s right. He has a sword. He is an ex-SOLDIER, First Class.

“What happened to you? You don’t look well.” She reaches a hand up to his face, and he tries to steel his expression, forcing himself not to jerk away at the sensation of skin against his solemn face.

“Yeah?” _Sick. Am I sick?_ “It’s nothing. I’m okay.”

“How long has it been?” This, she says with a peculiar tone. It takes him a moment to identify it as pain. She’s not just asking, Cloud thinks, she’s trying to see if he remembers. But why wouldn’t he remember?

There’s a beat, and a flash, and the memory of Nibelheim burns brightly. “Five years,” Cloud says confidently, and then, when Tifa doesn’t respond, “What is it?”

“It’s been a really long time.” Are there tears in her eyes? It must be the flickering train station light, Cloud decides, which, come to think of it, must be what’s giving him this awful headache.

There is a high, cold laugh in the back of his brain and a wave of nausea, but Cloud no longer has any idea what that could mean. Together, they walk back to her bar, Seventh Heaven.

He tells her about what happened after he quit ShinRa after the Nibelheim incident five years ago. She seems uncertain, but perhaps she’s just nervous to see him again after all these years. He’s a mercenary now, after all, not a war hero like he had told Tifa he would be. But hell, it is what it is. When she tells him that she’s a member of AVALANCE and they’re looking to pull off a _big_ job soon, he agrees to help out – for the right price.

He has the faintest sensation that somebody was supposed to be with him, but he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is alone now.


	2. i get by with a little help from my friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Read this part if the last part was too depressing and you prefer a happier ending :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I don’t say this now  
> I will surely break  
> As I’m leaving the one I want to take  
> Forget the urgency, but hurry up and wait  
> My heart has started to separate  
> \- “Look After You”, The Fray

**Years Later**

Cloud stands on a hill—more like a jutting rock—outside of Edge. The view is familiar, and with a painful twist in his gut, he pictures the rain falling gently against his skin, splashing in the pools of red that congealed around Zack’s lifeless body.

This is where Zack died. This is where he gave his life, so that Cloud could live, and in return, he only asked for one thing: for Cloud to remember him. For Cloud to carry on his dreams, and the honor that had weighed on him like a ton of bricks at times, a burden that Zack never considered putting down. “My living legacy,” Zack had called him, and Cloud had promised, his voice still hoarse from mako, to never forget.

Easy to make the promise, but Cloud had failed. Immediately, and monstrously, Cloud had failed him, had gone back on his best friend’s dying wish.

Cloud feels his knees tremble in a way that they haven’t in a long time. Cloud is strong now, maybe even stronger physically than Zack had ever been, strong in the ways he had dreamed of being as a young boy. The mako, combined with the crucible that had been their constant fighting had produced a body that was hard and tough – was there any monster that he feared now? Any villain that he questioned if he could bring them down? Even Sephiroth, reincarnated, had been felled mercilessly with First Tsurugi.  

His physical strength was never in question now, but bring him face to face with this blank stretch of land, a place no one remembered and nobody cared about, and Cloud’s armor and sword seem to grow, until they are too big and too heavy and Cloud feels just as small and weak and _useless_ as he had always been. He can almost feel the glass around him; he can taste the mako.

“I’m sorry. Zack.” Cloud forces the words out, hears his voice crack with a rush of humiliation and the truth washes over him. He had loved Zack, had loved and admired his best friend beyond all bounds of sanity, if he was being honest with himself.  When Zack died, Cloud died too. The only difference was that Cloud still had a heartbeat, still had to walk around and talk and sleep and act like he hadn’t sat on the edge of that cliff and considered, really considered, climbing into the shallow grave with him and closing his eyes forever too.

But Zack would never have done that. When Angeal had died, Zack hadn’t lain down and died; given up on his life and his honor and dreams. Zack would never have wanted anyone to give up like that, and the worst thing Cloud could picture at the time was, at the end of his life, finally looking into Zack’s bright eyes and seeing disgust there.

Tifa had asked Cloud, back before the crisis with Deepground, what he was going to choose. “A memory, or us?” she had demanded, thinking that Cloud was hating himself over letting Aerith die – and he did, of course, that was another one of the failures that haunted him. But oh, God, it was Zack that he was lonely for, Zack that he missed with an ache that was so foreign to him. He had never mourned Zack, because how could you let go of a man that you had forgotten existed in the first place? His grief had been stunted, and now it feels like it’s spilling out everywhere, overwhelming him, reminding him everywhere he looks that Zack should have been there with him, too.

Behind him on the rocks, Cloud suddenly intuits a presence. There is no sound, no footsteps, but Cloud has too much experience fighting to ever let himself get taken by surprise, even when he is drowning in an ocean of grief. He tenses instantly, his hands drifting towards his sword.

“Strife.” A soft, deep voice that Cloud instantly recognizes, even though he doesn’t turn around. Vincent has always moved with absolute silence, his tattered cloak whipping in the wind the only sound on the cliff.

Cloud sighs. He doesn’t really know what to say and he doesn’t want to turn around, doesn’t want Vincent to see his weakness, his shame

“This is where it happened?” Vincent asks, moving to stand next to Cloud. He doesn’t make eye contact, that would be too intrusive, but neither can he leave Cloud, who has changed so much since he first met him. This Cloud is haunted, twisted with grief and self-hatred.

The blond nods twice. It might come off as abrupt, unfriendly to anyone else, but Vincent doesn’t mind.

“Zack Fair was after my time,” Vincent says thoughtfully. “But based on everything that happened after his death, I think he must have been a person I would be honored to know. It is cruel fate that the rest of us never knew him as you do.”

“Not fate,” Cloud responds hoarsely. “He knew he was gonna die. For me. He would have made it to Midgar if he hadn’t—been looking after me.”

Vincent raises his dark eyebrows and sits down on the hard-packed dirt, and after a moment, Cloud sits next to him. They are silent for a moment, but Vincent is very sure that Cloud _needs_ to talk, that the pressure is overtaking him.

 “It wasn’t fate,” Cloud continues in a rush. These are the words he can never speak, and he has to force himself to let Vincent hear them.  “I let him die. I could have helped him, and I didn’t. If I had recovered like he had—if I had been stronger, we would have been faster.”

“And you chose not to help him,” Vincent says, his voice gently questioning.

“No,” Cloud snaps. “Of course not. I was sick, I was addicted to mako and I was too weak to function without it. I would never have chosen…for him to die.”

Vincent motions with his hands, a ‘there you have it’ kind of expression. Cloud wants to wave him off. Doesn’t Vincent realize Cloud has already thought of all this? That he’s thought of nothing _but_ what he did and didn’t do? There’s a reason he simply never talks about any of this, and that’s because nobody truly understands the depth of his weakness. Cloud falls silent, but he has come this far, and he can trust Vincent.

 “We were on our way to see Aerith, I think. He loved Aerith, and I—” Cloud can’t say it.

“You,” Vincent says calmly, “were a good friend to him, and your life honors his life.”

“My life,” Cloud laughs, hollow. “You mean the life where I forgot all about someone who had died for me?”

 “That grief combined with years of mako and Jenova cells – it’s surprising that you lived at all, Cloud. I know about grief. And I know about self-hatred, because I was too weak to do anything for the one I loved, too.” Vincent pauses for a moment. “I climbed in a coffin and stayed there for thirty years. You led us all in bringing down Sephiroth, bringing down the WEAPONS. Overall, that’s a much more useful response than catatonia.”

“Not everyone made it back home,” Cloud shoots back. “I didn’t save everyone.”

“None of us did,” Vincent responds reasonably. “Nobody can save everyone. All we can do is save who we can, and forgive each other for what we can’t.”

Vincent puts his good hand on Cloud’s shoulder.

“You’re forgiven, Cloud,” he says softly, and for the first time since Zack died, Cloud feels his eyes burn with unshed tears, and he lets himself believe.

 

* * *

 

Cloud and Vincent sit in silence up on the cliff outside Midgar for hours, neither one moving to go. Vincent, of course, has patience that would outlast any other person, and Cloud has seen too many terrible things to want to rush away.

As the sky darkens, Cloud sighs. It is time to go back, to a home that doesn’t really feel like home these days. But does anywhere? Where can he go that he will feel like he belongs?

“If you need to go somewhere,” Vincent says quietly, “if you need to just leave, to travel, people will understand.”

Cloud suddenly stares at Vincent like he had never considered the idea before. Vincent sees the interest in Cloud’s eyes, and feels a pang of regret that he can’t help Cloud forgive himself, but Vincent knows this is something that Cloud must do alone.

“Go,” Vincent says. “Go, and mourn properly, and then come back, Cloud.”

Cloud stands up quickly, and starts toward his bike, but then stops. “Vincent…” he begins, but he stops. What is there to say?

“I understand,” Vincent says softly, and there is not much else to add. Cloud is halfway to his bike when he realizes that Vincent is still sitting on the ground, his arm draped over his knees, still staring at ground where someone breathed their last breath, years ago. Vincent looks up at him, and smiles, and the kindness on his face transforms it. For a moment, he looks like Zack.

 “I’m going to stay here a little longer,” Vincent says, his long dark hair tangled with the wind. Both of them are so enhanced that he doesn’t even need to speak up to be heard.  He is still sitting on the hard-packed dirt when Cloud drives off. He sits there for hours, gazing at the spot that Cloud had kneeled over, wondering.

 

* * *

 

It is weeks later when Vincent receives a letter in the mail – a note, really. It’s just a scrap of paper with Cloud’s messy scrawl on it.

_Thank you. Be home soon._

Vincent throws the scrap of paper into his fireplace, and decides he will charge his phone tonight. _Forgiveness comes in time_ , he thinks to himself. _For everyone_.


End file.
